Southeast Asian Perspectives on the Rise of China: Regional Security after 9/11

Banlaoi N apoleon Bonaparte once described China as a sleeping dragon and warned not to wake it up.Now that China has awakened, it causes many nations to tremble-including the United States, the sole global power and the world's preeminent policeman.The unprecedented rise of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is a global reality.From one of the world's least developed countries in the 1970s, China had developed one of the largest economies in the world by the late 1990s. 1 The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reported that from 1979 to 1997, China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew at an average rate of 9.8 percent. 2 This phenomenal economic growth has spilled over to China's defense budget, with military spending rising to 17.6 percent of China's outlays, an equivalent of $3 billion in March 2002 alone.3 Because of the burgeoning economic and military power of China, there are enormous worries about the idea of a "China threat."The United States has particularly expressed strong apprehensions regarding the ascension of China.The US Commission on National Security/21st Century warns that "the potential for competition between the United States and China may increase as China grows stronger."4 Even the Global Trends 2015 prepared under the direction of the US National Intelligence Council argues that the implications of the rise of China "pose the greatest uncertainty" in the world.5 The Commission on America's National Interests describes China as "America's major potential strategic adversary in East Asia," 6 while the Council on Foreign Relations has stated that "China poses significant economic, military, and political challenges for the United States and for the nations of Southeast Asia." 7 This 98Parameters